For the love of 'Elsie'

Local author Antonia Rojas poses Tuesday with a copy of her book "Elsie." She wrote the book inspired by the neighbor who protected her and her siblings when she was a child.
(
Steve Stoner
)

In the style of an interview, Loveland resident Antonia G. Rojas writes about the woman who protected her and her two siblings from their stepmother's abuse.

Over the course of nine months, Rojas asked Elsie Olivas, who lives in Laramie, Wyo., about her journey through the 1930s and beyond to create a series of vignettes for "Elsie," published in 2012.

Rojas wanted to pay back the gift Olivas gave her at a time when she had no one else, she said.

"You touched me; now I will touch you," she said.

Rojas called Olivas every two weeks with a list of questions, and Olivas always asked her how she was doing, she said.

Rojas' questions were about Olivas' husband, Tom Olivas, whom she met at a dance and married at age 15. Rojas asked her about cooking meals for a large family, raising seven teenagers, learning to speak English and seeing tumbleweeds in Wyoming.

"I had so much fun with her," Rojas said. "I would laugh at her because she's so darn cute."

Rojas lost her mother, Georgia Gonzales, at age 6, and a mentally ill stepmother took her place, the subject of "In the Absence of Georgia," Rojas' memoir about growing up without a mother, published in 2007. Her mother died during childbirth, and her father, Bernardo Gonzales, married six months later, she said.

"He worked for the railroad in Wyoming. He needed somebody to care for the kids," Rojas said.

Rojas' stepmother, who didn't have any children of her own, started abusing Rojas and her siblings, calling them names and showing disregard for their belongings, she said.

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